Domestic details of sets add to popular shows' depth

By JEFF TURRENTINE
WASHINGTON POST
LOS ANGELES -- A new television season is upon us, and with it, another opportunity to see how people in Hollywood imagine that we Americans really live -- or how we'd like to.
As the crow flies -- or in this car-dependent city, as it drives -- it's only a couple of miles from Wisteria Lane to Star's Hollow, the two locales at the heart, respectively, of ABC's "Desperate Housewives" and the WB network's "Gilmore Girls." Both communities can be found on studio back lots perched just above the congested 101 Freeway, on decades-old sets that have been recycled for movies and TV shows ranging from "The Music Man" to "The Munsters." Each week, millions of viewers tune in to both of these newer programs not only to see what their favorite characters are up to, but also to take in two distinct and meticulously conceived visions of community.
American domesticity
Ever since TV's earliest days, shows have attempted to capture the broad spectrum of American domesticity, from the bucolic suburbia of "Father Knows Best," to the cramped urban quarters of "The Honeymooners," to Mayberry, the utopian small town at the heart of "The Andy Griffith Show."
Of the current crop of new and returning shows, few work as hard at creating a strong sense of place, and incorporating it into their thematic fabric, as "Desperate Housewives," now beginning its second season, and "Gilmore Girls," which has just started its sixth. Both are hourlong shows that take place in a recognizable if somewhat stylized version of reality. Both smartly blend comedy and drama. And both can claim to have large and loyal followings of women (and more than a few enlightened men).
Close-knit communities
On a deeper level, however, "Desperate Housewives" and "Gilmore Girls" are about the way people live in clustered, close-knit communities. In the former, it's Wisteria Lane, a street of well-kept suburban houses occupied by women struggling to balance their private and public selves. In the latter, it's the postcard-perfect town of Star's Hollow, Conn., where Norman Rockwell quaintness combines with just enough Felliniesque quirkiness to make it bearable for the hip mother and daughter who reside there.
These days, most hourlong dramas seem to take place in crime labs, police stations or hospitals. And the standard sitcom rendering of domestic space -- living room, sofa in the middle, stairs behind it, kitchen and entry off to the sides -- has become so clich & eacute;d that viewers barely see it anymore; it exists solely to give the actors somewhere to sit or stand while they crack wise and mug for the camera.
What a difference
Compare these bland, interchangeable spaces with the meticulously expressive interiors on "Desperate Housewives": the oh-so-tastefully decorated dining room belonging to the show's Martha Stewart manqu & eacute;e, Bree Van De Kamp; or the toy-strewn living room of Lynette Scavo (played by recent Emmy winner Felicity Huffman), whose four rambunctious children have drained her of whatever residual energy might be put toward tidying up. Or compare them with the Hartford estate of Lorelai Gilmore's parents -- the sort of house where one dresses for dinner, to be served at the antique dining table by a liveried servant.
No detail of either show is accidental. Every choice that "Desperate Housewives" production designer Thomas Walsh makes for a character's domestic environment sends a "coded message," he says. Images that show up on concept boards in his office -- poster-size visual summaries of characters' personalities reflected in magazine clippings, color samples, photographs of artworks and the like -- often materialize on the show's set, in one way or another.
'Affluenza'
To denote a condition that he and creator/executive producer Marc Cherry call "affluenza" -- whose symptoms include a lack of decorative restraint, and whose victims include Wisteria Lane's Gabrielle Solis and her husband, Carlos -- Walsh created rooms that suggest "the new rich trying to conform to the culture of the suburb they've embraced," he says. The couple's idea of tasteful art is a Warholian triptych of a come-hither Gabrielle on the stairwell; their notion of a serene master bath, an elevated tub in the center of the room, beneath a glittering chandelier, surrounded by candelabra.
The couple's passionate but volatile personalities had reminded Walsh of Greta Garbo and Rudolph Valentino; this season, he says, posters of the silver-screen icons will likely show up in the Solis' TV room. He adds that the newest desperate housewife to move onto the block, Betty Applewhite (played by Alfre Woodard), will arrive this season bearing a dark secret. To represent it physically, he has built for her a creepy and cobweb-festooned basement inspired by the one from "The Night of the Hunter," the 1955 film starring Robert Mitchum as menacing child predator.
Details are vital
On shows where interiors are asked to convey so much about the people who live there, details are everything. Rachel Kamerman, production designer for "Gilmore Girls," and her team scour the Warner Brothers prop department, local stores and flea markets, even e-Bay, to find the perfect item for a room.
Sets for the Dragonfly Inn, the bed-and-breakfast managed by Lorelai, are practically indistinguishable from the real thing. To go from the sun-baked Warner Brothers lot into a dark soundstage where antique chairs, Victorian wallpaper and a grandma's attic worth of knickknacks have been arranged to evoke a cozy country inn is to experience the illusory magic for which Hollywood is famed.
"I wanted a lot of wonderful visual noise, and more of a sense of reality than what I'd seen on other shows," says Kamerman. "It was important to me to have real wallpaper and molding and drapery and tile. Our fireplaces are working fireplaces. Even the little knobs on the cabinet have tiny pressed flowers in them."
In fact, the epiphany that gave birth to the all-important look of "Gilmore Girls" occurred at a real-life inn, the Mayflower Inn in Washington, Conn., where creator and executive producer Amy Sherman-Palladino was staying with her husband, Daniel Palladino, also an executive producer. The couple had just successfully pitched the show to the WB network, but still didn't know where it would take place or what the characters would do. Then they checked into the Mayflower.
Inspiration
"Everything about it just reeked of Americana," says Sherman-Palladino. "Later, we were driving down the streets and a lady waved us down and asked us: 'Do you know where the pumpkin patch is?' And then we went to this little diner where everybody knew everybody else, waitresses talked back to the regulars, and the regulars could just go to the counter and pour their own coffee. I went back to the hotel, called one of the other producers and told him that I knew I wanted Lorelai to live in a small town like this one, and to work in a historic inn. The whole show fell into place on that one trip."
The diner she and her husband visited became the model for Luke's Diner, the nexus of everyday energy in Star's Hollow. Here there's no need for a car: Everybody walks from Luke's to the grocery store to the confectioner's to the bookshop, inevitably passing by the town square, where there always seems to be a parade or concert or historical re-enactment taking place.
"The town is another character," says Sherman-Palladino. "The whole point of Lorelai leaving her parents' house in Hartford and moving there was that she wanted to find a place where everything felt free and open -- where people were supporting each other -- all the stuff she felt she didn't have growing up. The town automatically had to play the part of surrogate parents."
Wisteria Lane
Wisteria Lane, whose characters keep silent tabs on neighborhood goings-on from kitchen windows and shaded porches, offers a vision of community no less attractive, physically speaking. The street's Colonials, Cape Cods and Mission houses represent iconic American styles, signifying the heartland values that its residents are constantly transgressing. (The show's homes, moved several years ago from various parts of the Universal Studios back lot to a single streetscape, include houses once used for "Leave It to Beaver" and the movie "Bedtime for Bonzo," the comedy that paired Ronald Reagan with a chimpanzee.)
But the current neighborhood goings-on -- murder, suicide, drug addiction and adultery, to name a few -- give lie to the image of suburbia as a place where all is well.
Adoption offer
The satire may have been too subtle for one homebuilder, KB Home, who earlier this year offered to "adopt" Wisteria Lane as one of its own developments, granting producers free use of the company's name and a likeness of its logo. A letter from KB Home to Cherry approvingly cited characters who wave to passers-by, "ride bikes down their wide block, and take obvious pride in the appearance of their homes."
The offer was declined. Oscar Wilde had it about right: "Life imitates art far more than art imitates life."